brockton bay, meet glam

[mxglam]

It's the anniversary. Glam would very much not like to celebrate.

It’s their last day on Winslow High - they’re being transferred to Arcadia on Monday - and also their last day without a patrol schedule assigned.

And the PRT released a small announcement on its website about Glam joining the Wards. Now their wiki page doesn’t get erased, of course - they’re no longer speculative. They wonder what it’s got on them.

Comments

[thinkering]

"Maybe she didn't then, I don't know."

[mxglam]

"Well it's been two months, she's had lots of opportunities to."

[thinkering]

"So I predicted wrong about Piggot, sue me."

[mxglam]

"I'm mostly reassuring myself here. Sorry."

[thinkering]

"Ah, gotcha."

[mxglam]

Shrug. "Well, I can't spend the rest of my time here cowering in fear of Piggot and never talking to her, and I don't think it's... productive to live under the shadow of my fuck-ups. Not that they weren't major, or that I should forget them, but..."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, I get it."

[mxglam]

"So, let's stop talking about my fuck-ups and continuing to ruin my image to you and start talking about something that could actually help."

[thinkering]

"What do you have in mind?"

[mxglam]

"The Endbringers."

[thinkering]

"Well, that's a bit of a leap from acting classes and druglord cape."

[mxglam]

"It's been on my mind, mostly because an attack is due soon, and I haven't actually really done anything that could help better that gun. And, you know, brainstorming ideas and bouncing them off each other is a good first step, and you're good at the whole 'thinking' thing, so."

[thinkering]

"Assemble it on the plane while people are watching; I'll throw in a pair of hands and Tinker technobabble. Solicit help carrying it, ideally after our team's scattered and you can ask for somebody else who didn't see it in progress, spread it around. Run tests out on platforms over the water against targets you create that can dramatically shrivel up and do this after you've put a couple episodes of that internet TV channel you were going to do and never got around to. Make it loud and annoying-sounding when it amps up but don't give it more than about five seconds to do it, next one won't be Leviathan but time still counts."

[mxglam]

They nod along. "Yes, solid. What kinds of targets, do you think? It shouldn't be obvious that I made them, but Purity can destroy buildings if she's really trying and yet she's not all that strong against Endbringers, so they should ideally look more durable than that. Also do you think you could get one of your bots to follow us around while I do things? So we can upload them to the channel, editing it so we look badass - but will probably need permission from Branding or something before that, did they ever hire someone new?"

[thinkering]

"...Pluck a boat wreck out of the harbor," Lorica says after a moment. "And yeah, I have recordings of everything already, editing would be work, we don't have a new branding person yet, they're looking, we're supposed to borrow Boston's if we need consultation."

[mxglam]

"What do you mean, pluck a boat wreck out of the harbor?"

[thinkering]

"It's not ideal, exactly, but it's a piece of big junk that nobody'll miss - or think they'd miss, since you won't be using a real one. It's not more durable than a building but if you make it to begin with you can vaporize it."

[mxglam]

"Oh. Yeah, good idea. About branding, what do you suppose I could say to convince them to let me do the channel thing without sounding like I'm just in it for the attention? ...it has been two months, but I don't exactly have a good track record with them."

[thinkering]

"Boston person might not even know all the details? Maybe? Depends how good they are at their job and whether they expect to actually get any requests from this quarter. The thing though is that you can be in it for the attention as long as you're in it for the right kind of attention. The point of Branding is to get you the right kind of attention. Mm - assmeble a sample episode, bot will send you whatever footage you ask for, send that to the branding person and ask permission to put it up 'and maybe make it a series if the reception is good'?"

[mxglam]

"Yeah, sounds good. I think taking Purity out is a good first episode, people are curious about what exactly happened there, and the press footage's pretty bad and doesn't cover even half of the fight."

[thinkering]

"Sure. And voiceover it in some suitably charming way. You write, bot can edit."

[mxglam]

Nod. "Also, we could add 'power testing' episodes where I do suitably impressive things, including the Endbringer gun. I'm also thinking that I should start out small and 'become more powerful' as these episodes go, if I just start out with the full range of my skills and then don't change much people won't expect the kind of improvement I need them to."

[thinkering]

"Sure, you didn't actually stretch your power concept that much in the Purity fight. Show off that you can do animals, then that you can self-duplicate, then that you can do Changer stuff - do impressions or something - imply you can copy powers! - and at some point during this sequence when you have enough views do the Endbringer gun, guest star Lorica."

[mxglam]

"Yeah. How spread out should those be, do you think? Once a week? Twice? What kind of commentary do you think the fights should have, stuff like a general description of what's going on that's not immediately obvious, like what I'm thinking, or what? Don't wanna give out too many tactical details, of course, but if we 'let a few details slip,' the kind of detail that makes us look good without compromising strategy too much, sounds good."

[thinkering]

"What you're thinking, speculations about what the opponents were thinking, what you would've done if something hadn't worked within the bounds of the amount of power you're showing? Depending on what you want to project you can make the occasional joke at your own expense. Like when Purity blasted you down to Rewind... 'I don't remember this part but that probably hurt'?"